This invention relates generally to a water treating process and, more particularly, to apparatus for precluding the loss of granular synthetic resin material employed in a water demineralization process.
In the basic glass making furnaces and other high temperature glass fabricating operations, water is conveniently utilized as the coolant in the closed recirculating cooling systems therefor. However, it has been found that ordinary city or tap water possesses certain disadvantages when so employed. For example, the dissolved minerals and other constituents present in ordinary tap water tend to precipitate out of solution, particularly at the elevated temperatures encountered, and form deposits along the walls of the furnace cooling passages. Such deposits not only insulate the furnace walls to interfere with the proper heat transfer therethrough, but also vary in thicknesses along such walls to create "hot spots" therealong. Accordingly, it is important to first demineralize ordinary tap water before introducing the same into the various furnace cooling systems.
To this end, synthetic resin ion-exchangers have been developed to remove both cations (positive ions) and anions (negative ions) from water to completely demineralize the same. This is accomplished by passing the untreated water first through a resin exchanger which replaces all metal ions with hydrogen ions, then through a resin which removes the resulting acids. For optimum results, the resins are contained in vessels and are in granular or particulate form to provide the largest surface areas possible. Problems have been encountered by leakage of such resins from their respective containers or vessels. Not only is the replacement cost of such lost resins expensive, but they tend to migrate through the system, uncontrollably contaminating the same.